Price estimate

Reading the report on the specs of the PlayStation 5 highlighted one thing to me: it’s going to be expensive. I apologise ahead for the tech talk, but if it the SSD is NVME, which I suspect it will be for the improved UI, then I’d expect it to be only a 500GB SSD, because 1TB would add 33% onto the base price. The CPU will likely be based on Ryzen Zen 2, which isn’t actually priced ridiculously. However, 4K Blu-ray drives appear to be £100+ and the current GPUs available that feature ray-tracing start at just shy of £300.

Now, I’m aware that Sony will be dealing directly with suppliers, prices on components should fall between now and when the console is being mass produced, and Sony doesn’t look to make a profit from hardware on day one, but I’d be surprised if the PlayStation 5 is less than £450.

In fact, I think a likely launch price is £499. Sony have had a great generation with the PlayStation 4 but it wasn’t too long ago, March 2007 to be precise, that the PlayStation 3 launched at a staggering £425 in the UK. On the Continent it was priced at €599! Now that the exchange rate has swung so far the other way, perhaps it’s going to be higher than £500! Who knows. What are GC’s and other reader’s predictions?Matt

GC: We could see them going for a more expensive console if they had a streaming service like Project xCloud to balance it out and act as the cheaper option. Whether that will be possible at launch though, there’s no way of guessing at the moment.

Goldfish memory

Enjoying reading about people’s hopes and expectations for the next generation. I don’t care about improved graphics or faster processing whatsoever.

In my view the thing that could make the next generation the greatest ever will be an improvement in computer artificial intelligence. If I play one more game where I butcher an entire battalion of bad guys only for the remaining few to come off red alert because I’ve hidden in a bush for a few minutes it’ll be too soon.Chris

No loyalty

So the next gen is officially a year away, I don’t normally adopt the new machines day one, but if there’s full backwards compatibility for the PlayStation 5 it would be a no-brainer, providing the price itself is reasonable.

I went from having an Xbox 360 to a PlayStation 4, rather than an Xbox One, due to the whole original presentation and the forced Kinect was really off putting. Chances are I’ll be sticking with Sony, providing they don’t do anything stupid such as forced VR, or not being able to get the console without the headset at launch. I’m sure that won’t happen but who knows, the haptic feedback sounds interesting, but hopefully that doesn’t mean a poor battery life for the DualShock 5. And while it isn’t exactly a deal breaker, I hope they do away with the touchpad, it’s just unnecessary and ugly.Beems

Solid state or bust

With news that both the PlayStation 5 and next gen Xbox will both contain SSDs, this brings me to the question of what will happen regarding external storage support?

Less than a week elapsed before I needed to purchase a 4TB external hard drive for use on my new Xbox One S console, which is now close to being full as I currently have over 180 games installed and come day one I’ll have a ton of content to download thanks to backwards compatibility, Games with Gold, and GamePass – not including the content I’ve paid out right for.

It sounds like developers will be assuming everyone will be using the internal SSDs but gamers like myself (who like having a large collection of games to pick from) will be relying on external storage, so not to be ina constant cycle of deleting and re-downloading content.

So how will games perform when not using the internal SSDs that both developers and gamers are getting quite excited about?Chaosphere616 (gamertag)

GC: The way Sony were talking it seems like they are going to discourage it as much as possible, if not make it impossible. The impression given is that some games will rely on being installed on the SSD to work properly. Although we’ll have to wait and see.